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In 1972, upon returning to his hometown Glendale from a stint as a VISTA volunteer in President Johnson’s well intended but flawed War on Poverty, Ernie Orfila felt a need to strike out and try something that was not weighted down with flow charts and bureaucratic mazes. Recalling some pleasurable moments gazing at the stained glass windows of a small Lutheran church when he was younger, he decided to learn how to build such windows. After much searching, he was lead to the stained glass studio of John Wallis in Pasadena. Asked by Mr. Wallis why he should be allowed to join his select group of students, Orfila replied, “…to play with light.” That night he fell in love with the smell of solder and flux and the sound of snapping glass.
Within two years he had begun producing leaded glass terrrariums for the then burgeoning plant store market. At about the same time Orfila began teaching classes in the design and making of stained glass windows. Through conducting hundreds of classes and meeting thousands of students, he received an increasing number of commissions for designing and making stained glass panels.
He moved Orfila Art Glass Design to Del Mar in ’79, fulfilling a wish to return to the San Diego where he had gone to college and become very attached to its arresting landscape and beautiful weather. The North County area of San Diego at that time was experiencing a boom in construction and the studio prospered through the successful completion of hundreds of commissions. With the end of the 80’s came the down cycle of the boom and Orfila adroitly changed gears and became the designer for Alpine Stained Glass, the largest studio in San Diego.
More than two thousand designs and seventeen years later he resumes his career as an independent designer. “…to play with light” has become an act of consecration, a celebration of its mystery.
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